


Purcell

by carriecmoney



Series: Indirection [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Drinking, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-10
Updated: 2015-10-10
Packaged: 2018-04-25 16:40:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4968445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carriecmoney/pseuds/carriecmoney
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tooru's got a busy semester lined up, so he shouldn't have time to worry about one irritating classmate following him around. And yet...</p><p>Inspired by the tumblr prompt "I take my grades very seriously and you’re the lazy asshole who asks a ton of off-topic questions to distract the professor and I might be a foot shorter than you but I swear to god I’ll fight you AU". Companion to "Postcard".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Purcell

**Author's Note:**

> {A/N: I did the Tooru POV piece I threatened in [Postcard](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4842236). This was the first time I've done this double-POV thing, and I gotta admit, it was fun. Doesn't have to be read before or after the Hajime piece, just in whatever order you found them :) [art for this](http://carriecmoney.tumblr.com/post/131062063011/i-wrote-a-double-pov-iwaoi-college-au-twoshot-and) [twitter](http://www.twitter.com/carriecmoney) [tumblr](http://carriecmoney.tumblr.com) [the post I pulled the prompt from](http://maplerosekisses.tumblr.com/post/123602979673)}

Tooru had to have been an evil person in a past life, like a serial killer or a basketball player or Hitler. That was the only rational explanation why shit like this kept happening. Here he was, minding his own business, talking to a few of his new classmates before lecture began, when who would walk in but Mr. Know-It-All himself in all his rugged bastard glory, face stuck in a scowl. Tooru grinned wide to mask the initial stab of irritation and waved, but he ignored Tooru’s gesture of friendship and stomped to the back of the room. Tooru huffed and turned back to the girls, but he didn’t feel like talking anymore.

Tooru had a lot of names for that guy, and not a lot of them were nice. He had called him ‘Iwa-chan’ during last semester’s Japanese class because he hated it, but early on Tooru’s traitorous head labeled him ‘Darcy-chan’ and it stuck. Curse his Jane Austen addiction and this guy’s insistence on being arrogant and taciturn and sharp as a tack and he probably looked good dipped in a pond, too-

Tooru ran his fingers through his hair and pulled the thoughts out of his head, trying to focus on the girls’ gossiping about the class’s reputation among their STAC major friends. Tooru recrossed his ankles on the empty seat in front of him, glancing over his shoulder. Darcy-chan had his head down on his desk, arms crossed in front. Even with a jacket on, Tooru could tell he hadn’t stopped working out over the break-

He jerked around, tugging at his dogtags until the chain bit into his neck. _Stop_ , Tooru. He forced himself to listen to his pre-existing conversation and ignore Darcy-chan’s hot iron presence at his back.

The professor came in soon after, tripping over apologies and a messy stack of papers. Tooru sat up from where he had slid almost horizontal, unwinding his legs from their careful path through the desk bars and accepting the slapdash pile from the guy two desks up from him, peeling off four sheets and passing it back, catching a flash of eyebrow scar in his turn. Damn, this totally meant he couldn’t sneak glances this semester. It was the only reason he had made it through the mind-numbing torture of Japanese For Idiots. What a shame. He would have to find other ways to draw out that rough growl of a voice, then.

When the professor was going over the required texts, Tooru bit his lip and raised his hand. “Do we have to buy the books if we already have a girlfriend?” he asked (he already had half of them in a boxed set of classics his sister got him a few Christmases ago). The professor sputtered and launched into a predictable speech about who exactly the Romantics were. Behind him, Tooru heard a vague throaty sigh.

He laced his fingers behind his head and smiled.

* * *

Tooru may have joked about having a girlfriend in class, but in the real world, that wasn’t going all that well.

He sat down at a table at the froyo place just off campus, feet claiming the chair across from him as he dug into a French vanilla/birthday cake concoction. His partner on this ice cream mission fell into the third chair at their round table, swirling gummy bears into his triple chocolate. “One day I’m gonna sit on your big feet and see how you like it,” he sighed.

Tooru waggled his eyebrows. “You know what they say about big feet, eh, Suga?”

Suga narrowed his eyes at him. “Big egos.” He stabbed his spoon in his yogurt. “You said you wanted to talk.”

Tooru sighed, pulling his phone out of his pocket and chucking it on the table. “Maybe? I’m not even sure.” He fished a gummy bear out of Suga’s froyo and popped it in his own mouth, barely noticing Suga’s glare as he stared bleakly at his phone. The ice cream had hardened the gummy bear to a thicker solid, harder to chew. “I think Rina’s avoiding me.”

Suga hummed, sitting back in his plastic chair. “What makes you say that?”

Tooru swirled his spoon in his yogurt, rainbow sprinkles bleeding dye into cream. “I’ve only seen her once since the semester started,” he began. “She always says she’s busy at the lab, and I believe her, but she should be able to take a coffee break.” He ran a finger along the chain around his neck, sliding the loop for the dogtags back and forth. “We haven’t said that we’re back on after the break yet. Like, it’s just a few words, and it never changes much, but it’s nice to know where we stand.” He dropped his spoon in the tub and gripped his hair with both hands, frowning at his multicolored yogurt. “She’s been… weird, ever since she moved to grad school.”

“You’ve mentioned that.”

“It’s so hard to _talk_ to her about this!” Tooru growled. “We can go on about fluid dynamics until the world ends, but try to get a straight answer about what she wants from _me_ and it’s like she just – turns off.” He covered his eyes with his palms. “Don’t date a nerd,” he groaned.

“Good luck on that here. Your ice cream’s melting.”

Tooru huffed and started eating, not really tasting it. “I miss talking to her like normal,” he admitted to his yogurt. “But it’s all just… sour, lately.” He held his spoon in his teeth and huffed. “Maybe I just need to get laid.”

Suga slapped the back of his head hard enough that his spoon clattered to the table. “ _No_ , Tooru.”

Tooru squawked, saving his spoon from contamination. “Whatever! It’s not like she’ll care if I do or not!”

“That’s literally _always_ been the problem here,” Suga said with a frown. “She’s nice and y’all fit and all, but you need a jealous bitch to keep you in line.”

Tooru gasped. “Rude!”

Suga shrugged. “Just speaking truth, boy.” He wiped his brown-stained mouth on the back of his hand. “I don’t know why you keep coming to me when I always tell you the same thing.”

Tooru shrugged. “Because you let me.”

“My claim to fame. Doesn’t change my advice, though.” He counted off on his fingers as he listed, “You need to talk to her, you need to get exclusive, or you need to get out.” He shrugged and dug into his yogurt. “Maybe y’all could’ve worked into the open relationship thing, but starting out like that is just begging for trouble.” He tapped Tooru’s temple. “It messed you up.”

Tooru wrinkled his nose. “I’m not messed up.”

Suga laughed. “Honey, you’re a train wreck with no tracks.” He cuffed Tooru’s shoulder with a fist. “That’s why you’re so much fun.”

Tooru pouted, lower lip curling out. Suga rolled his eyes, and Tooru dropped it with a laugh. “One of us gets too many dates, and the other one can’t get a date,” he said, rubbing his forehead, shoulders shaking. “Together we make two normal romantic lives, eh?”

“Hey! Cute gym guy waved at me yesterday!” He pointed his spoon at Tooru, flicking chocolate drops on Tooru’s jacket. “Progress!”

Tooru wiped off the specks with his hand, laughing. “Maybe you’ll say more than a hello before you graduate.” Suga stuck his tongue out at him.

“At least _I_ don’t have yogurt soup,” he taunted. Tooru looked down, and – yeah, he had rainbow chowder in his tub now. He shrugged and picked it up to drink it straight while Suga cackled.

* * *

Two weeks into the semester, Tooru was grading homework at his usual table on the third floor of the library long past when sane people were gone. He liked the quiet hours, when no one came up to talk to him about anything or anyone, no chatter to distract him from his work. He could drink his Monsters like water and sink into numbers, senseless to his surroundings or his physical condition.

“Thought I might find you here.”

He blinked and rubbed his face, getting pen all over it. A black girl with piled-high dreads and round glasses had a hip pressed against the table, frown under her smiling eyes. He smiled. "Hey, Rina."

“Hey, Ru.” She ran a hand through his hair; he closed his eyes and leant into the touch. “What’re you working on?”

“Grading.” He nuzzled into her hand; she scratched his ear with a throaty chuckle. “There are some smartasses this year.”

She hummed, sliding some papers over so she could sit on the table. He opened his eyes just as she peered into his closest Monster can. “I heard you kicked one out already,” she commented, draining the last of it and making a face. He shrugged. She raised a thin eyebrow at him. “Wait, you really did?”

“He was making his lab partners uncomfortable, talking very loudly about shark sex or something. He had to clear his head of such disgusting thoughts.” He laid his cheek on her thigh, winding his arms down her dangling calf. “Did you know sharks have two dicks?”

“You know, I think I actually did.” She kept petting him with one hand, shifting the mess on his table with the other. “Or was it dolphins?” Tooru shrugged, snuggling into her comfortable leg. She shuffled papers for a moment before she said, “Little early in the semester for an all-nighter.”

He hummed. “Not my first.” He traced his fingers around the hem of her pant leg. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”

She was quiet just long enough to be suspicious, hand stilling in his hair. “I’ve been busy,” she said at last. “Sorry.”

His eyebrows furrowed, and he made himself open his eyes, glaring at the neatened work pile on his table. “Maybe we should… talk about that.”

“You’re hardly in a place to talk about what you want for breakfast right now, babe.” She took the stack of labs she just organized and stuffed them in their accordion folder, marking his place in the various textbooks lying around before closing them. “Right now the only thing we’re doing is going home and going to bed.”

He cuffed her pant leg twice to trail his fingers higher, pouting up at her. “But I’ve got a Monster in me, I’d hate for it to go to waste.”

She rolled her eyes. “Sex is not sleep, Ru.”

“Not with that attitude.” She stacked the books and accordion folder together and pushed him off so she could slide off the table and shove them in his bag slumped on the floor. He crossed his arms on the table and hid his face in them. Aluminum clattered for a moment before her boots walked away. He wouldn’t fall asleep-

She shook his shoulder a long blink later. “Up, babe.” He groaned; she kicked his chair until he got to his feet, almost falling over when she hung his backpack strap from one reaching arm. She chuckled as he shrugged it on, then led the way to the exit, Tooru frowning at her back.

* * *

Between office hours, the library, various empty rooms in his favorite fraternity houses, and his advising professor’s office couch, Tooru didn’t have much time to go to his actual dorm. He usually dropped in to shower and change during his lunch break; if he picked up a girl from a party, it was really the only place to go where they wouldn’t get walked in on. He might run into his roommates once a week, but the two on the other side didn’t bother him much besides to pass on messages from their overbearing RA; the guy who shared a wall with Tooru was even more of a ghost than him.

Which is why, when he was leaving the bathroom, not running late for once, he screamed and nearly cracked his head on the tile at the appearance of his angry face scowling by the sink. He clutched his chest, heart pounding, sprawled ungracefully on the tile, as Kentarou curled his lip and growled at him. “ _What?_ ”

Tooru sucked in a breath, then let it out with his slip of composure, pulling himself to his feet by the door handle and readjusting his towel. “Just didn’t expect you home right now, Mad Dog-chan.” Kentarou grunted and went back to what he was doing at the sink – now that Tooru wasn’t scared witless, he saw the dye and razor on the counter. He ducked in his open door to hop into some real clothes as the razor buzzed to life behind him.

“You need any help with that?” he asked when he had a shirt mostly on. The buzzing stopped. “I can get your back if you want, it’s no trouble.” He finished buttoning his shirt and turned to find Kentarou holding out the razor, glaring. Tooru smiled. “Don’t I at least get a ‘please’? You nearly scared the life out of me, after all.” Kentarou huffed as Tooru took it anyway, flipping around to glare in the mirror, Tooru rested his fingertips on Kentarou’s scalp, tilting his head down. “A little lower,” he asked, the voice to calm a wild animal. Kentarou’s shoulder loosened a fraction as he complied, knees bending to give Tooru a better angle. “You want it same as before?” he asked, tracing a thumb across the indent in his tight, wiry curls. Kentarou grunted an affirmative, and Tooru got to work, digging out the top channel once more. “Having a good semester so far?” Kentarou grunted, shrug sharp. Tooru flicked his pierced ear. “No moving.” Tooru caught his glare in the mirror and winked. Through the reflection of Kentarou’s open door, Tooru could just see the corner of a sawdust-carpeted cage. “How are Fish and Chips?”

“Fine.” Tooru hummed, buzzing off more bleached hair. “Chips is shedding too much and Fish is getting fat.”

“I _thought_ I was finding animal hair on my jeans.” Tooru grinned at him through the mirror. “Nice to know it wasn’t me going gray already like I feared.” Tooru brushed fallen hairs from Kentarou’s shirt and turned off the razor. “All done!”

Kentarou brushed a hand along the back of his head and grunted, shaking out any clinging curls. Tooru backed off, shaking water out of his own dripping hair as he turned to collect his things for the next twelve to twenty-four hours.

“Thanks.” Tooru glanced over his shoulder out his open bedroom door, where Kentarou still was, frowning at his reflection. Tooru smiled.

“Like I said, it’s no trouble,” he said, flapping a hand. “Let me know if you need help in the future, okay?” Kentarou nodded, collecting his supplies as Tooru tossed some books and a protein bar in his bag and slung it over his shoulder, slapping off the light and closing the door behind him. “See you later, dog. Make good choices!”

(Tooru could have sworn he saw Kentarou roll his eyes at that, but it must have been a trick of the mirror.)

* * *

It wasn’t a suspicion that Rina was avoiding him anymore. It was an elephant-in-the-room fact. He scowled at his phone as he waited for his Romantic Literature class to start, scrolling through their text history and trying to find the point where it went wrong. Maybe if he could pin it down, delete it, they could start over.

His search provided no answers by the time stupid Darcy-chan walked in, stupid and sexy and unconcerned with Tooru’s pout. It wasn’t _fair_ that he could be so distracting to Tooru and yet show nothing beyond minor annoyance for him. None of his attempts to provoke him into a fight had worked (he even had committed treason against his physics major and argued against calculus three; he had to wash his mouth out with soap after). He still talked in class like everyone else, but Tooru missed how his eyebrow twitched and mouth pinched when he was _really_ frustrated. Plus, he never hid what he expected, and his directness was refreshing when almost every other relationship in Tooru’s life was couched in obliqueness and pretty words.

The class discussion kicked up around Tooru while he was spacing out over a guy he had never spoken to outside of class. He shook it out and traded his silent phone for his _Frankenstein_ , marked with sticky notes instead of highlighter (his sister had spent a lot of money on this set), and watched the tide of the conversation flow around him.

“I just don’t like Victor,” the band girl with a sloppy bun beside Tooru said. A few people laughed, but Tooru wasn’t in the mood. “I mean, there’s scientific curiosity, and then there’s just being a dick. I mean, what kind of jerk lets their _sister_ take the fall for their brother’s murder? That’s just wrong.”

Tooru bit his tongue and plastered on a smile. “It’s not always that easy,” he said, flipping through the pages of his book, but he was seeing his phone and the last received message from five days ago. He turned in his seat to better meet her hazel eyes. “Just because you know you should doesn’t mean it makes it an easy choice.” He tossed the book across the desk and huffed. “I mean, he _is_ totally a dick, but that’s beside the point. It’s hard to think, when you’re backed against a wall like that.”

“Oh?” Tooru shivered. “And have you been there before, then?” The class and Tooru turned to the back desk and Darcy-chan, who was wearing a stupidly tight shirt under his discarded coat today and had a stare fixed on Tooru, his heavy arms crossed in front of him for all the world to see. Tooru grinned, eyes narrowing; Darcy-chan’s curious half-smile turned to a scowl.

“And you haven’t?” Tooru rapped a knuckle on the cover of his book. “It works for the novel, holds to the ‘who is the monster and who is the man’ theme Shelley’s got, sure, but in real life Vickie here would be annoying as heck.”

Darcy-chan bit his lip, and Tooru could feel his blood pumping in his temples. “Fancy that.”

 _Disgusting_. Tooru turned more in his chair, desktop biting into his back as he folded a leg up to strangle it instead of that thick neck. “Oh, get off that high horse of yours, we can’t all be perfect. Go on, tell me you wouldn’t do the same thing there.”

“I don’t know, I’m not an alchemist with a death wish, I’m not insane enough to bring someone back to life.” Tooru’s fingers clenched in his pants leg at the casual reference to his favorite manga, _damn_ this guy. “But I would take responsibility if it worked.” He grunted; such an animal. “Really, I’d punch this guy if I could. I mean, the writing’s fine, but wishy-washy pansies like this priss make me nauseous.”

Tooru inhaled deep through his nose – he didn’t know Tooru’s personal life, he couldn’t know how close he related to Victor, that he could be just as ‘wishy-washy’ and he still had blisters from spreading pine straw on campus beautification day. He couldn’t, but his unblinking stare peeled away Tooru’s skins, raw cold in his blood. So he bit back with a bitter grin. “You can’t solve everything with violence, Iwa-chan.” Darcy-chan twitched at the nickname, upper lip twitching. _Heh_.

Someone cleared their throat behind him. Tooru whirled in his seat; the professor had a smile in his eyes as he circled two fingers in the air. “Maybe so the rest of us can understand, boys?” Tooru’s face burned; he hadn't even noticed his Japanese switch. He forced a laugh and an apology as someone else picked up the threads of the discussion, saving his ass from an embarrassing backtrack.

Why did he have to be sexy _and_ smart?

* * *

Tooru had managed to avoid his dorm’s laundry room admirably up to this point. Rina’s house had a washer/dryer that wasn’t an elevator away, and for the last year or so, most of his clothes were at her place, anyway. This semester, of course, he had only been over a couple of times, and now he was out of underwear. He stuffed everything in two washers and went back up to his dorm to wait for it. He could probably knock out most of this week’s grading before he had to go down and rotate it.

When he shouldered open the door to his dorm, the other half of his four person suite was yelling at each other from their rooms. Tooru smiled and ducked his head, moving to hide in his room so he could spread out his papers on his bed-

“…It’s too bad both our setters have a capella practice during game time,” a voice called. Tooru froze halfway through the common room. “I mean, we can _do_ it, but it’s nice to have a dedicated one.”

“You need a setter?” Tooru asked, spinning in his house shoes on the tile, laundry basket swinging.

His roommates poked their heads out of their neighboring rooms. The black-haired one that Tooru couldn’t remember the name of slow-clapped. “He speaks!”

The… other one crossed his arms and leant back on his door frame. “We were beginning to wonder if you died and we were getting cheated out of our free As.”

Tooru flapped it off with his empty basket. “Come now, campus would be in heavy mourning if that happened.” He tilted his head at them. “Why would you need a setter?”

They exchanged a glance; the other one shrugged. “We head up an intramural team over at the sand pits on west campus,” he said. “Nothing special.”

Tooru tapped his basket against his leg, bad knee twinging. “You any good?”

“We’re decent.” The black-haired one (Tooru should really learn their names already) raised a thin eyebrow. “I didn’t know you played.”

Tooru, who had been the captain of his team in high school and nearly won the prefecture twice, grinned. “I dabble.”

* * *

“I can’t _believe_ they won’t show up for practice!” Tooru moaned a few days later, hanging over the front desk of the rec center. “No _wonder_ half of them suck!” They hadn’t even been _stretching_ before Tooru showed up – who could blame him for forgetting his laundry? ( _What asshole folds up someone else’s boxers anyway?_ )

Suga, work polo dotted with spots from the pen hanging from his teeth, rolled his eyes. “It’s _intramural_ , Tooru, not the Olympics. It’s just for fun.”

Tooru scowled at the TV screen behind Suga’s chair, playing a slideshow of the rec center’s schedule and policies. “But where’s the fun in not trying?” He rotated his right ankle, toes on the tile, feeling his knee pop on each circle around. It didn’t cave anymore, but it still pinched in the cold.

“Not everyone likes to kill themselves like you,” Suga said with another eye/pen roll. “Speaking of, don’t you have about five other places to be right now?”

Tooru smiled as sweetly as he could. “But none of them are as fun as you are, sweetheart.” Suga lowered his hand behind the desk to flip Tooru off. He laughed, a surprise bark that made him curl around his counter support. Suga smiled, eyes flicking around the lobby for work – double-took towards the staircase. He checked his hair, ears flushing pink; Tooru raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“ _That’s him_.” He jerked his head at the stairs, hand covering his eyes, pen circling with his grinding teeth. “Cute gym guy is _right there_ , oh my God I’m gonna die.”

Tooru snorted and snuck a glance – his smile fell. “No.”

“ _Yes!_ ”

 _Don’t jump to conclusions, Tooru_. “Beard or no beard?”

“No beard, no beard.” Tooru ducked his head to hide his relief. “Beard is his gym partner and always shuffles him along like a damn bodyguard or something,” Suga said, quick and low. The two guys – who could be brothers, except for the beards – got to the bottom of the staircase, close enough for Tooru to hear Darcy-chan’s rough growl and a new voice, smoother but still deep. Tooru peered out of the corner of his eye behind a lock of hair. They must have been in that basketball tournament upstairs. Their shirts were sweat-damp under their jackets, and Darcy-chan’s normal hedgehog hair was more sea urchin now, stuck together with sweat and his eyebrow scar was a starker pink against his flushed face and he had a frown on his clenched jaw and _what did Tooru find so attractive here?_ Oh, and Suga’s cute gym guy was there, too.

“Well, you don’t have bad taste,” he mumbled to Suga as they passed out of earshot, Darcy-chan storming ahead so Suga’s guy had to jog to keep up with barely a wave to the desk. Suga leant sideways to watch him with a sigh, pen dangling from his bared incisors.

“I wish his partner guy would let him stick around for more than a hello and an ass-check,” he whined, propping his chin on his hand. “But it’s always rush, rush, busy, busy with beardy.”

“It is, huh.” Tooru looked over his shoulder, eyes narrowed and tongue in his teeth, and watched them go. Darcy-chan was a thundercloud, hands in his jacket pockets and broad shoulders hunched; Suga’s guy was a partly cloudy spring day. At the door, Darcy-chan glanced back. Tooru growled, frowning. “I think we can do something about that,” he muttered, too low for Suga to hear over the echo of the downstairs treadmills.

* * *

Tooru had been off and on steaming since Darcy-chan blew off Suga’s hopes and dreams on Saturday. By their shared Tuesday class, Tooru was ready to break Darcy-chan’s endearingly crooked teeth in. He kept his eyes on the door, not even pretending to pay attention to the conversations around him until the bearded offender stepped in – stepped back at Tooru’s glare. Good. He _should_ be afraid.

Darcy-chan frowned back as he passed to his seat. Tooru got up and followed him, sitting backwards on the empty desk in front of Darcy-chan’s and clenching his hands in front of him, watching as Darcy-chan dug in his backpack, ignoring him like an _asshole_. When he straightened, he jumped with a funny chirp that Tooru would have laughed at in any other situation, but not today. “You’re a piece of work, aren’t you?” he hissed in Japanese. (No reason to air this particular conversation to the American public.)

Darcy-chan blinked, mouth falling open. “Excuse me?”

“I mean, I knew you were an uppity jerk, but I didn’t think you were cruel.” Darcy-chan’s eyebrows furrowed as he drew back in his seat. Tooru struggled against a grin. “I thought the arrogant Mr. Darcy thing was just a front, but here you are, huh?”

Darcy-chan scratched his neck, muscles in his forearm shifting. “Look, I know we speak the same languages, but I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about. And who the hell is Mr. Darcy?”

 _Shit._ Shit crackers on a stick. Tooru drummed his fingers on his good knee as he watched Darcy-chan’s face shift. He couldn’t accept that he was the asshole here. “Suga said you’ve been getting in the way of his love life,” he snapped as a test. Darcy-chan threw up his hands, sprawling back in his chair.

“Okay, who the _fuck_ is Suga? How am I getting in the way of someone I don’t even _know?_ ”

Tooru rolled his eyes, grunting hard enough for his throat to clench. “Oh, don’t be _stupid_ , I know you’re not.” Darcy-chan spread his hands, mouth twitching. Tooru scrunched his face. “Grey hair? Works at the CRC? Nice smile, better butt?”

Darcy-chan’s hands dropped, closely followed by Tooru’s stomach. “Wait… _you_ know _that_ guy?”

“ _Yeah_ , and _exactly_ the number of times you’ve cockblocked him with that friend of yours.” Tooru tried to keep up his glare, but the lump in his gut had doused the days-old fire. “You didn’t know his name?”

“Of fucking course not, I don’t even remember _yours_.” _Fair enough_. “No offense.” Darcy-chan scratched his nose, eyes unfocused. Tooru’s grip loosened so his fingers were barely meshed together. “It’s not… Daichi’s just an idiot, I never…” He sat back, crossing his arms in a very distracting manner, staring at Tooru’s hands. “Huh.”

“‘Huh’, huh?” Darcy-chan’s eyes snapped up to him, and Tooru grinned, the week’s weight lifted with that one flash of old irritation. Darcy-chan jerked his chin to gesture behind Tooru. He looked over his shoulder at their blustery professor collecting his life at the podium. He sighed. “I guess you win this time.”

“Were you keeping a tally?”

Tooru jumped and flipped back to a smarmy grin, ugh, why did that look so _good?_ “No!”

Darcy-chan chuckled as Tooru hopped off the desk, giving Darcy-chan his best pout. “You’re such a dick.”

“Takes one to know one.” Darcy-chan flicked out a two-finger salute from his temple. “Next time I’ll make Daichi talk to him, just for you.”

Toooru geared himself up for a smart retort, but the professor called for attention at the front, and he could only make a face before he had to go back to his seat and pretend that he hadn’t finished _Frankenstein_ two weeks ago.

(Darcy-chan: 31, Tooru: 26)

* * *

から: **爽** くん  
You said cute gym guy’s name is Daichi right??  
2月23日(月曜日)15:13

From: Tooru  
Yes? Is something up with him  
Mon, Feb 23, 3:15 pm

から: **爽** くん  
Oh my god. OH MY GOD  
2月23日(月曜日)15:16

から: **爽** くん  
HES SO CUTE CAN I MARRY HIM  
2月23日(月曜日)15:16

From: Tooru  
Haha not yet in this state ;9 What did he do  
Mon, Feb 23, 3:17 pm

Tooru looked up from his phone as he crossed campus from class to his office hours in the physics building and caught a flash of reddish-brown dreads in the sea of winter black on the sidewalk. He grinned and jogged towards it.

“Rina!” She froze, looking around for her name. He hid his smile behind his scarf and snuck around to her blind spot, pinching her sides to make her squeal before hugging her from behind, chin on her shoulder. “Hey.”

“Ru, let _go_.” She shrugged him off and stepped from the sidewalk to the grass, shoving him shoulder. “You about gave me a heart attack, boy!”

“Sorry.” He forced a smile and moved out of traffic as well, shoving his traitor hands in his pockets. “Couldn’t resist.” He tilted his head at her as she cleaned her glasses on her shirt. “What’s up?”

“Just grabbing coffee while my code compiles.” She held her glasses up to the weak sunlight to check for spots before putting them back on. “Don’t you have class now?”

“Office hours. And I was on my way.” He smiled. “I can be late, though, if you want some company.”

She wrinkled her nose at him – she had a new septum ring, gold with black ends. When had she gotten that? “Hardly professional, Ru. What will your poor students think of you if you can’t be bothered to show up on time?” She cuffed his arm with a weak fist. “Plus, you know how the Starbucks line is, your hours will be half over by the time you escape.”

Tooru pulled the inside of his lip through his teeth. “Well, if you’re sure.” He shifted his weight from one boot to the other. “Want me to come over tonight?”

She shook her head, pulling her unbuttoned coat tighter. “No, I’m probably not coming home until… Wednesday? Big stuff at the lab.” She smiled at him. “Nice to run into you when I could, though.”

“Yeah.” She hesitated, then bounced on her toes to kiss his cheek before walking on to the Starbucks in the student center, shoulders hunched. Tooru sighed, scratching his neck with a grimace. His phone buzzed in his pocket; he extracted it to find four messages from Suga.

から: **爽** くん  
I’m not even sure it makes sense to you but he dropped off a box of stick pens at the desk for me with his name&no  
2月23日(月曜日)15:17

から: **爽** くん  
Courtney said he was really cute and fumbly when he left them!!!!!  
2月23日(月曜日)15:18

から: **爽** くん  
THERES NO WAY THE WORLD ALLOWS FOR THIS CHEESECAKE TO BE GAY  
2月23日(月曜日)15:18

から: **爽** くん  
TOORU IMMA DIE HERE AT THIS DESK AND ITS ALL HIS FAULT!!!!!  
2月23日(月曜日)15:20

Tooru pressed a finger to his mouth, sent a silent thank-you to the spirit of Darcy-chan, and tapped off a reply before pocketing his phone again and striding to office hours, trying to leave the sour note of the Rina encounter behind and focus on the positive.

From: Tooru  
Nice to know the way to ur <3 is thru ur oral fixation  
Mon, Feb 23, 3:22 pm

から: **爽** くん  
Fuck off nothing u say can dim this for me  
2月23日(月曜日)15:22

から: **爽** くん  
I am texting him right the fuck now holy god what do I even say  
2月23日(月曜日)15:23

から: **爽** くん  
Tooru  
2月23日(月曜日)15:24

から: **爽** くん  
Tooru HELP  
2月23日(月曜日)15:24

From: Tooru  
;9  
Mon, Feb 23, 3:24 pm

から: **爽** くん  
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH  
2月23日(月曜日)15:25

* * *

“Happy now?” Darcy-chan’s growl said behind Tooru at the next Romantic Literature lecture, yanking him out of the nice conversation about the weather he was having with his classroom neighbors. Tooru glanced back and caught the sly grin tossed his way and had to talk to it more _right now_. He apologized to the ladies and followed Darcy-chan to his desk, feeling a bit like a lost kitten. He took the shortest route over the desks to sit backwards on the desk before Darcy-chan again, grinning in return.

“Gotta hand it to you, you’re efficient,” he said, hiding in Japanese. “I thought I was the only one who could get someone a date that fast.”

Darcy-chan shrugged. “I just gave him a kick in the ass, that’s all.” He smiled, and Tooru’s pulse raced in his fingers. “I can’t believe that pen thing worked.”

Tooru scoffed. “You kidding? That’s right up Suga’s alley.” _Unless…_ He narrowed his eyes. “Was that your idea?”

Darcy-chan’s eyebrow scar twitched. “Oh _hell_ no, that was all Daichi. I would’ve just talked to the guy.”

“Uh-huh.” Tooru bent in, a challenge – the same look that had convinced his favorite professor to let him join his TA taskforce as an undergraduate. “Is that so?”

Darcy-chan tilted his head, staring at him with a frustrating neutral expression that told Tooru absolutely nothing about the thoughts behind it. Then he scowled. “I watched your movie.” Tooru frowned – _huh?_ “So I’m your Mr. Darcy, huh?” Shitcrackers on a burning shitstick. “What does that make you, then?”

Tooru yanked his eyes away, scratching his hot neck. “Uh-”

“Sorry!” their beautiful, wonderful professor yelled as he came in, essays cascading to the podium. “Sorry, the copier is a nightmare device, I swear!” The class laughed, and Tooru made his escape in the ruckus, the all-too-knowing look in Darcy-chan’s eyes seared into his brain.

(Darcy-chan: 33, Tooru: 26)

* * *

Two weeks before Spring Break, Tooru got a box of donuts from the local bakery and took them up to Rina’s lab just before midnight. Sure, maybe she had been ducking around him for a while, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t try and be a good boyfriend to guilt her into talking to him again.

The lab knew him – half of them were mutual friends, after all – and let him in, falling on his present in exhausted sugar hunger. Rina stayed at her desk, glasses on top of her head. Tooru left the vultures to their prey after extracting a red velvet one, taking it over and setting it on top of an old Starbucks cup. “Hey, babe.”

“Hey.” She slapped her glasses down without looking up. Tooru perched on a blank corner of her desk, feet dangling, watching her type. She sighed and rubbed her eye under her lens. “Can I help you?”

“Can’t a guy look at his girl without getting arrested for it?” He nudged the cup. “Go on, it’s your favorite.”

“M’not hungry.” She maintained eye contact with her monitor. Tooru sighed and crossed his arms.

“Babe, you’ve been avoiding me all year. Something’s up.” Her typing stopped, hands clenched on her wrist rest. He bent in to whisper, “Talk to me, okay?”

She rubbed both her eyes this time, shoulders tight. “I can’t do this right now.” Her glasses almost slipped off her face; Tooru caught them before they could fall. Her hands popped out like blinkers, shielding her face from Tooru. She took a deep breath in and let it out in a whoosh. “I can’t do this.”

“Well, maybe you gotta.” Tooru ground his teeth. “Let’s go for a walk.”

“No.” Her head fell. “Okay.”

Campus was cold, dark, and empty outside. Tooru led them downhill from the physics building, careful not to bump her. “What’s up, Rina.”

She whined and flung her hood up over her dreads and face. “I hate this.”

“I noticed that. You avoid things you hate.”

“No-” She hung her head. “I don’t hate you, Ru.”

“I know.” His stomach roiled. “I don’t hate you, either.” He grimaced. “But I hate…” He gestured to the air between them. “This.”

“I know. I know, I know, it’s _my_ fault, I…” She sniffed and swiped at her face. “Shit on a stick.”

“Hey.” He led her to a low brick wall around an ivy bed and sat them down. “It’s no one’s fault.”

“Stop that, you _know_ it’s mine-” She pulled her hood down over her face. “I’m sorry,” she whispered to the winter night.

“It’s okay, it’s okay-”

“No, it’s _not!_ ” She shook her head hard enough for her hood to fall back, glasses tilted and foggy. “I’m hurting you, I’ve _been_ hurting you, just because-” He cupped her face to hold her steady and make her look at him, straightening her glasses with his thumbs. She choked on a wet laugh, gripping his wrists. “You’ve always been too good for me.”

“I’m sorry you think that.” One hand slid down to her neck, scooting closer so their ankles locked. “I never did.”

“You _terrify_ me, Ru,” she whispered, fingers hard over his jacket sleeves. “I never knew what I was supposed to feel about you, and at first I loved that, but now I’m just mixed-up.” She pressed her cheek against the hand still on her face, eyes closed. Tooru caught a flash of a mouth-shaped bruise on the bared side of her neck. “I fucked it up.”

Tooru stared at the hickey, a few days old. He should be jealous, he was supposed to be on fire that someone besides him touched her when they were already on such rocky ground. But all he felt was nausea at this conversation and cold from the wind and the brick. “It was a joint effort,” he said at last, her tears dripping over his hand. He swallowed on the lump in his throat. “Maybe…” He coughed, the cold air biting when he breathed. She mumbled something too low for him to hear. “Sorry?” But she shook her head. He slid his arms around her, holding her warmth close. He swallowed again. “Maybe – maybe we need to take a step away.”

She shook her head against his chest. “No, Tooru.” She sat back, her hands on his shoulders, eyes still leaking but set. “We can’t do this middle ground thing anymore.” They stared at each other. Tooru had a flash of a thought that this would be the last time he would hold her. She tried to smile, lip wobbling. “Oh, don’t you start crying on me, too.”

He caved and buried his face in her shoulder, squeezing her tight. “I’ll miss you.” She let out a noise between a squeak and a sigh and a hugged him back, hard.

“We can try to talk and stuff.” She nuzzled into his collar. “But not right away.”

“Okay.” He gave her one last squeeze. “Okay.”

* * *

In the morning, he woke up in his dorm room, disoriented, upset, and not quite clear on why he was upset. It took him ten minutes of hiding from the sun in his pillow to remember. When it clicked, he pulled the covers over his head and moaned. _Fuck_. _Why_ did he have so much to _do_ today?

He rolled out of bed eventually and stumped over to brush his teeth, hair sticking up everywhere. He had slept in his jeans last night, and now they itched like a fucker. Kentarou was over in the common room, eating a sandwich for breakfast at the cluttered round table. Tooru barely waved at him as he trudged through his routine, moving around each other in mutual silence.

Tooru was halfway through getting dressed when it hit him all over again. He sat down hard at his desk, faceplanting on his closed laptop, arms hanging by his sides. This wasn’t just breaking up with a girl – he had lost the only person on campus he could have a sensible conversation with, who never thought he was silly or expected too much of him or didn’t need an explanation with every story. Why did he _do_ that?

He didn’t know how long he was sitting like that before someone rapped on his desk. He jumped rubbing his face on sleepers. Kentarou was standing there, jaw clenched tight, a gray and white furball in his grasp. “Here,” he said, holding it out to Tooru. He blinked and accepted it – one of Kentarou’s guinea pigs crawled onto his palms, sniffing his sleeves, little rodent feet tickling his wrists. “Fish felt bad for you,” he grunted, leaving Tooru’s bedroom back to his. Tooru gaped, then looked down at the silky creature inspecting his cuffs. He smiled and stoked a finger down Fish’s spine. Fish arched into it. Tooru set her down on his desk, making a ring with his arms around Fish and laying his cheek on his laptop again, watching Fish sniff around her new location with a faint smile.

* * *

Midterms had snuck up on Tooru like always; he still hadn’t properly filtered out that Rina and him were _over_ when he found himself sitting in a strangely quiet Romantic Literature class, matching character motifs to their names. He could probably take this test in his sleep, and breezed through it with fifteen minutes left in the class time when he handed it in. Darcy-chan, surprise of all surprises, was right behind him. So that wasn’t just because they had been the only two native speakers in that Japanese class. Tooru gestured him out the door first and got a scowl in response. Whatever, he didn’t feel like fighting today.

He was only a few steps away from the closed door when a grumbled “Hey” stopped him. He turned, head cocked, at Darcy-chan, ten paces away and a crease between his eyebrows. “Are you a physics TA?”

Well wasn’t _that_ hit in from left field. “Uh – yeah, I am.” Tooru grinned. “Why, you need homework help or something?”

Darcy-chan didn’t rise to his bait, just shaking his head with that damned neutral expression. “No, just checking something.” He pulled his hat down over his ears and shouldered through the outside door, Tooru’s mouth flopped open as he watched him disappear down the outside stairwell. Why on _Earth_ would he ask _that?_

* * *

He still had no idea what the rationale for Darcy-chan’s question by nightfall and the last game of the half-semester volleyball season. They were playing the only other decent team in their little intramural league, the one with the receiver captain who knew Tooru’s roommates and one of Tooru’s own more annoying students as their setter. If anything could keep Tooru’s busy mind focused for an hour, this was it. He tossed off his shoes – it was a little cold for that, sure, but he got better purchase in sand with his bare feet. They could think he was crazy all they wanted, as long as he beat them. (Which he and his improving team _did_.)

They were taking a water break between sets. Tooru massaged his leg above his bad knee idly as he listened to his team’s chatter. “Hey Sawamura!” Maki yelled at the other team sprawled out on the slope blocking the fields from the dorms behind them. “Where’s your better half?”

“Right here!” Suga yelled back from his seat draped over a sweaty Daichi. Everyone who knew them laughed. Maki threw one of Tooru’s shoes at Suga. Suga ducked, dragging Daichi down with him by his hangman’s grip around his neck. Tooru almost felt sorry for the poor guy.

Daichi pushed him off enough that they weren’t indecent o look at, face red. “Stop it, Kou.” Tooru raised an eyebrow over his water bottle, but let it go as Daichi shrugged in their direction. “Hajime does what he wants, I’m not his babysitter!”

Tooru scratched under the bridge of his earmuffs but couldn’t reach the itch in his head. “Hajime?”

“Daichi’s roommate,” Mattsun supplied, stretching out his arms. “Which you would know if you ever came with us to mooch off their free food.”

Tooru hummed, watching Suga flirt and Daichi fluster. “What does he look like?”

“Like Daichi, but… scruffier?” Mattsun supplied.

“More rugged?” Maki shrugged, reaching for his toes. “Like, if you stuck Daichi in the forest for a few months with a hatchet and a pack of gum, Hajime would be what came out.”

Mattsun slapped his leg and pointed at Maki. “Yes! That’s exactly it!” He ruffled Maki’s hair. “You’re a genius, man.”

Tooru frowned at the grass. “Oh.” _Click_. “ _Oh._ ” He flipped his half-full water bottle over in the air. “Does he have an eyebrow scar?” he asked, brushing his fingertips over his own left eyebrow. Maki and Mattsun turned away from their flirting to him in unison. He kept his eyes on his frozen toes.

“Oh no.” Maki crawled over Mattsun’s long outstretched legs peer at Tooru’s face in the borrowed floodlights from the neighboring fields. “Do you have a _stranger crush_ on him?”

Tooru gaped. Mattsun snorted. “Well, if you’re into the whole lumberjack assassin look, I guess I can understand.” He shoved Maki’s legs off his. “He’s not that hard to talk to, though. Suck it up.”

“Wha- I don’t have a _stranger crush!_ ” Tooru protested, voice cracking. The referee, one of the rec center staff, blew her whistle for the next set, and Tooru scrambled to his feet – he was serving first, thank _God_. He gestured for her to throw the ball to him; just before he caught it, Maki snuck up behind him and whispered, “ _Stranger crush_.”

He yelped and fumbled the catch, the ball falling on his stiff bare feet. He slapped Maki as he ran past, lifting the ball with his foot to his hands. Jerk. He would show _him_. Stranger crushes were _ridiculous_.

* * *

He had a stranger crush.

It was just a little thing, he told himself. Who wouldn’t fall a bit for that human badger? He just liked watching his face turn red when he was angry. Besides, Darcy-chan was many things, but he wasn’t a stranger – not quite.

The last week before spring break filtered by in a buzz of student org meetings, labs, homework, job applications, and a Rina-shaped hole that couldn’t decide if it was growing or shrinking. He had vaguely planned to follow her to her Arizona home like he had during Thanksgiving, but that was shot now. With no American transportation and not enough money for a trip home, he was stuck on campus. The first weekend he caught up on his work, pulling an all-nighter out of habit as he sliced through his homework backlog and his endless grading.

Except that, Monday morning, he found the impossible end.

Faced with the terror of an empty dorm, a busy head, and nothing in his Netflix queue, he left it all behind to stalk the haunted houses of Greek row. The other stranglers and stranded welcomed him, folded him into their threadbare couches and crusted wall runners, pressing fresh beers into his hands at each half-hour mark like a drawn-out snooze timer. He didn’t remember most sunsets by sunrise as he drowned his rocking emotions in whatever was on the garbage pail menu. His nausea and headaches became as close to him as his alcoholic sweat.

He was three days into loud conversations and bad bed choices and airing out on the front porch of today’s haunt, his fever blood too warm for the March chill to permeate. He shivered anyway, red Solo margarita sweating over his fingers, staring blankly between two sets of shoulders yelling about some video game at the dim yellow lamplight on the street. A shadow moved; he blinked and narrowed his eyes, familiar sex beard coming into focus. He gasped. “Oh my God.”

“Huh?” The girl hovering at his elbow laid her fingers on his arm. “What’s up?”

“I know him!” He shoved his margarita cup in her hands without caring if she caught it and wove through the bodies to the disappearing beard. “Hey!” The girl tried to catch his shirt, but even four days drunk he was faster than her and took the crow’s route to the blue and green hat over porcupine hair, jumping over the railing, and the world was dark and scratchy and it _hurt_. Ow.

A voice called something from above, and he groaned, too done to move. Hands ghosted over him, thick and calloused, pushed and pulled at him to lay him on his side.

“You’ve _got_ to be shitting me,” a rough voice growled. Tooru rubbed at his face, skin tingling and sore. “The fuck happened?” it called, turned away from Tooru. A girl answered him from above, the faded noises of the party blurring her words. “Yeah, I guess,” the growl answered whatever she asked. The hand gripped Tooru’s shoulder. “Where does it hurt?”

“Buh?” Tooru flopped on his back, the few stars powerful enough to shine through the city lights swimming behind a sex beard and a steady scowl, dark eyes soft. He slapped his hands over it and moaned a long “ _Nooo_.” Darcy-chan snorted.

“C’mon, you big baby, sit up, it can’t be comfortable down there.” Rough hands pried away his and held them as he was hauled to his feet, world dancing in circles around him. An arm circled his waist, big and warm. “Steady there,” he murmured, breath dusting over Tooru’s cheek. “How are you this drunk this early?” Darcy-chan muttered in Japanese.

Tooru made a face. “S’not that early,” He pressed his oversensitive face into scratchy scruff that smelled like peppermint and motor oil and man. “You smell good.”

“And you smell like tequila.” Tooru’s support shifted under him, but he adapted to the movements with drunken sloth grace. “You gonna help me?” he snapped. The girl’s voice answered, but Tooru was too busy investigating the seams of Darcy-chan’s coat with his fingers to listen, breathing in this unexpected scent like pure oxygen in a carbon dioxide vacuum. “Something like that,” Darcy-chan rumbled, and Tooru got to feel it through both chests, yum. “I know where he lives, at least.” Tooru hummed, nose peeling back the layers, and maybe he was dissecting it verbally, but neither of them were paying attention. There was lavender laundry detergent, or dryer sheets, like the one he had found in a T-shirt a month ago when someone else had done his laundry, folded it, put a note on his pillowcase written on a takeout napkin, _be grateful I didn’t throw it on the ground_ , which he was, but did they even know _how_ to fold up towels? They were basically a tangled heap next to the perfect creases on his slacks, which he had planned to wear for a Valentine’s Day date with Rina until she backed out and ruined his plans (again), Iwa-chan, why didn’t she admit that she loved me? Why _couldn’t_ she?

The sear of cold metal on his ass startled him away from _that_ bad path. Hot hands caught his elbows. “Look at me.” The streetlights swam as Tooru blinked, again, before his eyes found Darcy-chan, concerned and all the hotter for it. “Are you okay?”

Fucking _asshole_. He wasn’t allowed to be this charming – that was Tooru’s job! “Don’ pull this… knight in shinin’ armor bullshit on _me_ , jerk.” He pushed Darcy-chan’s chest, forehead aching. “Y’don’t fool me for a _second_.”

Darcy-chan’s frown deepened. “I just asked if you were okay.” Tooru shut him out, fighting the headache pangs. “If you’re getting drunk this early on campus during spring break, there’s probably something else going on.” The hands on his elbows rubbed up and down Tooru’s arms, and he shuddered at the tremors it sent through him. “I know we’re not really friends…” Darcy-chan trailed off. Tooru curled in around himself, _yes, thank you for that reminder_. “Want me to take you home?” he asked in a tiny voice. Tooru nodded. Warm wool coated his neck – he blinked at the gray scarf there, up at Darcy-chan’s bared neck, heart overflowing into three rabbit beats. Darcy-chan grinned, a pulse wave through Tooru’s veins. “Don’t tell me you’re a sappy drunk, too.”

Tooru’s lip trembled and he dropped on Darcy-chan in a hug, sobbing on his “Iwa-chan!” Darcy-chan cursed in his ear and shoved him off – cursed and caught him again. Tooru hiccupped.

“Jesus, kid, you’re a wreck.” _You have no idea_. The wing through his hair was choked off in a single motion, night noises muffled. “Let’s get you home, moron.” Tooru swallowed, squeezing his eyes shut to gather himself before pushing to his feet, ground tilting. Darcy-chan’s deep laugh surrounded him. “Need me to carry you, _princess?_ ”

Tooru was never too drunk not to talk back. “You wish.” Tooru focused on his stupid feet, holding out his arms to keep steady. _Don’t betray me now_. “’Kay, I’m ready.”

They started to walk, but Darcy-chan was strong, and warm, and robust, and smelled so _good_. What right did he have to that? Could he bottle it up so Tooru could keep it on his nightstand? Would it be the same without the broad shoulders that bore it, or would it be like listening to a soundtrack without watching the movie first? Iwa-chan was unfair, being so distant but never cold, abrasive but never mean, not really. This would be so much easier if I could hate you, Iwa-chan, if you weren’t quick and muscle and exactly what I looked for in a man – and Rina was wonderful, Rina is phenomenal, but she never was perfect, perfect like you. You’re supposed to be a _jerk_ , you’re supposed to be mean to me so I stop feeling bad about how we fight so much. I’m not supposed to fight with people I could like – you need to stop being _nice_ to me!

Darcy-chan chuckled, all the way down to Tooru’s bad knee, and he shivered. “If this is being nice, I’d hate to see what you think I _should_ be doing.” _Hmph_. Tooru lifted his head to pout at him; Darcy-chan only smiled, eyes still soft. They had been soft this whole time. “I think you have a strange impression of me.”

“Nuh- _uh_ , you’re a big meanie with a sex beard an’… an’ a fuckin’ god complex.” He patted Darcy-chan’s chest. “And _none_ ’a your shirts fit ya.”

Darcy-chan barked a laugh. Tooru jumped and held on tighter. “ _Really?_ ”

Tooru patted his chest again with a little more force. “They’re all too small for ya, doncha know you’ve got muscles? Suga says you’re at the gym ‘nough.”

“My clothes fit fine.” _Liar_. Some of his shirts were damn near _indecent_ , but also probably stupid soft. He hitched Tooru higher. “I have a god complex?”

“ _Duh_.” Tooru made a face. “Every time you open your mouth you gotta be right all the time.”

“No I don’t. You’re just wrong a lot.” Tooru hit him. “Stop punching me or I’ll leave you here to rot.”

He was way too nice to do that, even if he wouldn’t admit it. He wormed his fingers through the flap of Darcy-chan’s coat to see if the shirt under it was as soft as he suspected. “You’re the only one who says that, jerk, e’ryone else thinks I walk on water.”

“Then I guess I’m here to remind you that you’re not Jesus.” Darcy-chan stopped. “Right now, you need to _drink_ some water.”

“Stop being _right_ ,” Tooru breathed, eyes fluttering. Darcy-chan flinched away.

“Stop making out with my damn ear,” he snapped.

Tooru giggled, tracing his tongue on the hard shell before him. The body under him froze. “Your _ear_ , huh?”

“Don’t you even-”

Tooru dove in while his mouth was open, tongue first, skin on fire as he tried to kiss him breathless. Before he could even get in the groove, Darcy-chan clawed his way out, fingers in Tooru’s mouth in a very unsexy way. “Wow, ok, you’re sure lucky you’re cute. Are you sure that wasn’t your first time?”

Tooru gasped around his fingers, face hot, brain pumping, holy _shit_. “Oh, ‘ike you coul’ ‘o bettah!”

Darcy-chan grinned, cutting through Tooru’s drunken mistreated emotional haze, and hooked Tooru by the teeth like a fish. He could be Tooru’s bait any day. “Stop trying to bait me, asshole.” He extracted his fingers before Tooru’s gag reflex could kick in and unlaced Tooru’s clinging arms from around him, jerking his chin behind Tooru. “Time to cross.”

 _Well_. This was a first. He usually got at least to second base before his target rejected him. Months of staring for _this?_ A waste. He spun around – they had gotten to the intersection by his building without them noticing – and marched across the crosswalk, face cold in the wind. What a fucking _asshole_.

He forgot about the gate until he was ten steps away and remembered all of his stuff was in his jacket pocket back at the house. Shit. He scowled at the revolving gate like it had just turned him down flat, too, kicking it and pushing it – maybe he would get lucky. The card reader beeped, and the gate gave – Tooru stumbled. A hand touched his elbow, but he shrugged it off and pushed through, the cold bars grounding him. Nothing like a hand in your face to half-sober him up. Salt dripped in his panting mouth. He cursed and wiped at his face with – the scarf. Darcy-chan’s scarf. Great.

Jogging steps echoed on the concrete and the canyon of the dorms around them. The hand grabbed his wrist this time, but, _no_. “Hey.” Tooru ignored him except to slap him away when he tried his elbow. “ _Talk_ to me, dammit.”

 _Ugh._ “Make up your damn mind!” Tooru snapped, spinning, hating that he cried easier drunk as teardrops flung out. “Are you gonna be nice to me or not?”

“What?”

Darcy-chan was still, but Tooru didn’t care. He paced, hands shaking, body shaking. “You insult me, put me down, act like I’m an _idiot_ all the time, and just when I do something _really_ stupid-” He tore the hat off his head to feel the cold again, to feel again, tossing it aside to pull at his hair. He _hated_ putting himself out on the line like this with no safety net, no backup, he liked to know things would work when he did them – he never should have done this, done any of this, it was all a mistake. He was such a fucking idiot, stupid for a guy he barely knew, who didn’t know his favorite color or his sister’s name or how he liked his coffee. “You and your eyebrow scar can go straight to hell,” he muttered. Movement drew Tooru back out to see Darcy-chan touch his eyebrow scar, face drawn.

“I never said anything about rejection, as far as I remember.” He looked up and held Tooru’s eyes, unfazed by his outburst, still a steady rock to Tooru’s blustering. “I just like people to remember when I kiss them.”

Tooru gulped. _Oh_. “M’not _that_ drunk.”

Darcy-chan snorted, shaking his head. “Sure you’re not.” He swerved around Tooru, sticking his hands in his coat pockets. “Besides, you taste like shit right now.”

Tooru gasped and ran after him, keeping a few feet between them to resist temptation, sliding back into his habits of picking the worst line to get under his skin. “Do _not_! Maybe you’re just scared ‘bout kissin’ boys, is that it? Scared your delicate manliness will get bruised-”

Darcy-chan spun and snagged the front of Tooru’s shirt, focused, stealing Tooru’s breath away as he backed him up against the nearest wall. “Shut your shitty mouth already,” he growled, slamming Tooru against the brick. Tooru sucked in a breath, heartrate skipping. Darcy-chan grabbed his face and kissed him, not sloppy at all, chapped lips rough like they should be, fingers digging into Tooru’s jaw so it popped open. Tooru was weak to his searching tongue and searching hands, melting in the cavity between brick and muscle, scrambling for every part of Darcy-chan he ever wanted to know the feel of, his torso, his arms, his hair, ending on his ass, tucking his freezing fingers in his back pockets. Darcy-chan bit his tongue when he squeezed, and they broke apart, Tooru’s lungs heaving. Darcy-chan rested his forehead on the side of Tooru’s face – oh, he forgot about the height difference with the size thing. That was nice. This was nice.

“Oh.” Tooru tried to regulate his breathing. “I see why you want people to remember.”

Darcy-chan slid his hands in a blaze down from Tooru’s neck to his waist. “Yeah.”

Tooru huffed. “Stop being _better_ at things than me.”

Darcy-chan laughed, moving away so the cold air rushed in to fill the void between them, hands still on bodies. “If you still think that when you’re sober, maybe you’ll get a chance to try and beat me at it.” He patted Tooru’s cheek and pulled Tooru’s hands out of his pockets by his wrists. “Right now, up.”

Tooru pouted, Tooru petted, Tooru tried to goad him into another elevator-stopping kiss, but Darcy-chan had the will of a battleship all the way up to Tooru’s floor. They stepped out of the elevator, Darcy-chan comfortable and knowing – Tooru snapped his fingers. “Wait.” He frowned at Darcy-chan. “How do _you_ know what floor I’m on?”

“Because I live here, too, dumbass.”

Tooru sputtered as Darcy-chan got his keys out and went to the first door by the elevator bank, the one with the white board on the door with the night’s menu from last week – “ _You’re_ my RA?” Tooru shrieked. Darcy-chan smirked over his shoulder and shook his head.

“No. That’s my roommate.” He held open the door for Tooru. “Come in, I don’t trust your dumb ass alone right now.” So _that’s_ why that Daichi name sounded familiar. Then that… Oh. Huh.

He moved on autopilot, senseless as his tipsy mind tried to tie strings together until he was staring at a spackled ceiling, water bottle in his teeth, sprawled out on a cardboard couch, extremities thawing in pain. Darcy-chan’s heavy presence sat on the coffee table by his side. “Feeling better yet?” Tooru slammed the water bottle closed on the flats of his front teeth.

“By ‘better’ you mean ‘less drunk’, sure,” he said, marveling at the distant ceiling. “But seeing as how I just made out with my Japanese Mr. Darcy and I’m pretty sure I bruised my ass jumping into a thornbush, _hell_ no.” He blinked, face slow burning. Shit on a stick. “’Kay, maybe I’m still a little drunk.”

Darcy-chan grunted and patted his knee. “You’ll get over it.” He left Tooru without a word. Tooru curled up on his side, sucking at his water, eyes sliding closed for a minute…

* * *

He woke up with a kicking headache and violent need to get to a toilet _now_. Lucky all the dorms around here were pretty easy to figure out, even when it hurt to open your eyes, so he made it just in time to not splatter everywhere. His hands shook on the cool porcelain, waiting on the tide to rise again or sink back down. Someone moved behind him through the open door.

“Need me to hold your hair?” Darcy-chan asked, and if Tooru thought his voice was rough _normally_. Tooru flapped a hand back at him, eyes clenched against the light – he didn’t want to know what this creature looked like just rolled out of bed when he wasn’t in a state to do anything about it. Darcy-chan didn’t move for a minute, but then his feet padded away; a second later, the sink ran. Tooru sighed, forehead on the seat.

Tooru spent his hangover alternating between the toilet and the tile floor, little gifts of touches, water, and aspirin from Darcy-chan kicking him a little more that he totally fucked this one up, too, before he could even get it started. He was a giant mess.

When his stomach didn’t feel like the ABC Café anymore, he used a spare toothbrush offered for his use as Darcy-chan made them breakfast – real breakfast, with skillets and everything. Tooru huddled in the comforter he had woken up under in a chair, knees pulled to his chest, his coffee almost as perfect as he liked, made purely on Darcy-chan’s instincts. It was a morning to be a little in love.

Darcy-chan set an actual omelet and two pieces of toast in front of him, consuming his matching plate with the animal decorum Tooru expected. Tooru picked at it, taking tiny bites between steadying coffee sips, watching Darcy-chan eat with stolen glances through his dirty hair. “Y’know.” Tooru cleared his throat and tried again, Darcy-chan’s eating paused. “You know, I think we got off on the wrong foot. Back in three thousand one.” He sipped his coffee, smiling as best he could. “Can we… start over?”

Darcy-chan put down his fork. “No.” Tooru’s stomach dropped. He propped his chin on his hand, that damned neutral look leveling Tooru out. “But I’m okay with giving you another chance.” He held out his hand across the table. “Iwaizumi Hajime,” he grunted. Tooru beamed, stomach lifting back up again, and shook it.

“Tooru – Oikawa Tooru.” He winked. “Nice to meet you again, Iwa-chan.”

Darcy-chan – Hajime – Iwa-chan – oh, he’d figure out what to call him later – shook his head, taking his hand back to pick up his fork again. “You’re still gonna be an asshole, huh?”

Tooru grinned. “Yep!”

Hajime stuck a piece of omelet in his mouth, but Tooru could still see the smile in his eyes. He pointed at Tooru’s plate. “Eat. It’s good for you.” Tooru ducked his head, appetite back in full. Maybe he hadn’t fucked this up after all.

(Darcy-chan: 34, Tooru: 26)


End file.
